I'm wondering if Sony thought this through when they decided to remove the Other OS option from their
PlayStaion 3s. The United States Air Force
spent money for about 2000 PlayStation 3 consoles to build a massive processing cluster. In fact, the contract was awarded to a company just four months ago.
The Air Force found the computing power in the Sony consoles offered plenty enough at such a low price compared to other alternatives. They installed Linux on all the
PlayStation 3s and were pretty happy with the result.
But, as you are well aware, Sony removed the Other OS option from the fat
PlayStation 3s not too long ago. Now, this doesn't affect the Air Force until they have to send in a unit for repair. Most likely, it will come back updated with the latest firmware that removes the Other OS option making the console useless to the Air Force.
I'm hoping that they find a way to work with Sony to repair the console yet leave the Other OS option in there but we'll have to see what comes out of it. It's not common to see our tax dollars being used in an efficient way and to have this project scrapped because Sony won't allow the option on the older consoles would be a big disappointment.
That said, I wonder where a company could get 2000 older
PlayStation 3s since the slim ones don't have the Other OS option available.
